Alice in Chains: The Untold Story

In 2001, Chris Cornell started working on material for Audioslave. According to court records, he checked himself in to rehab in late 2002, and, while he was there, he and Susan separated. Cornell filed for divorce a year later.8 According to a court document filed by Susan’s attorneys, Cornell wanted to finalize the divorce quickly because his girlfriend, the Paris-based publicist Vicky Karayiannis, was pregnant, and he wanted to start a family with her. They would later marry. He gave Susan a settlement offer, which she accepted, and the divorce was finalized on March 2, 2004.9

Litigation surrounding the divorce would play out over several years, involving multiple cases, courts, and attorneys in Washington and California. There were further legal disputes about personal effects of his that had remained at their Seattle home, now owned by Susan, including Grammy awards, lyrics and demos for songs, and a collection of guitars that Cornell had used during his career.

*   *   *

At the beginning of the decade, Alice in Chains was still on hiatus. Although he left the door open for an Alice reunion as long as all four members were “alive,” Jerry made another solo album.10 Dave Hillis moved to Los Angeles in 2000 and ran into Jerry at the Sunset Marquis in West Hollywood. The two wound up hanging out together. At the time, Hillis was living in a studio apartment in Hollywood and was waiting for a two-bedroom unit to open up in his building. Jerry eventually took over his old apartment.

According to Hillis, there were a lot of musicians and actors who lived in the building, including Comes with the Fall, a band from Atlanta that Jerry was a fan of. This was the beginning of Jerry’s friendship with William DuVall.

“Comes with the Fall had just moved from Atlanta to LA,” William said during a 2013 interview. “[Jerry] came up and introduced himself to me at the Dragonfly Club on Santa Monica in LA. That’s how we met. Then it evolved into him learning our songs with us in our apartment. He would sit there, ‘Show me that thing you’re doing.’ Then he was finishing up Degradation Trip and he asked us to go on tour with him, so that kind of cemented our friendship.”11

William’s musical career began with the Atlanta hardcore band Neon Christ in the fall of 1983, in which he played guitar. Neon Christ released a self-recorded, self-produced record in early 1984 on Social Crisis Records—a name William came up with. In addition to being musicians and record producers, Neon Christ had to be business entrepreneurs, responsible for selling their own records. “In the early days of the hardcore scene in America, it was so small. I’d even extend that to the entire scene in the whole world—little pockets of people in Finland, then you’d find out about a little pocket of people in Japan, a little pocket in Italy, and you’d get these letters,” William said during a 2013 interview with Drowned in Sound. “To be in your bedroom trying to come up with these songs, then to be in your friend’s bedroom shoving envelopes and getting orders from Russia, then you get these broken-English letters … This was pre-Internet, in the early eighties, and it was so small and so innocent, and so passionate.”

On the significance of the hardcore scene, William said, “The hardcore thing is the first time the kids actually seized control of the means of production, in a meaningful way that was happening concurrently across the world, without you and your little scene knowing about anyone else. It’s a weird thing in the collective consciousness, where it just had to happen.”12

According to Randy DuTeau, William’s bandmate and singer in Neon Christ, the band started out heavily influenced by thrash, but the music evolved from an emphasis on speed to an emphasis on structure and melody. That musical progression was largely the result of William’s diverse range of musical influences up to that point.13

Jerry tapped Comes with the Fall and another band, Swarm, as his opening acts for a monthlong solo tour of clubs and small venues in March and April 2001. In addition to being an opening act, Comes with the Fall would be pulling double duty as Jerry’s backing band, because Rob Trujillo and Mike Bordin were unavailable for touring.14

After returning to Seattle to attend Layne’s memorial service, he decided not to cancel or postpone any of his remaining tour dates. That spring and summer, he found himself in the odd situation of opening for Nickelback and Creed, both influenced by Alice in Chains.

The Nickelback/Jerry Cantrell tour came to Seattle a month after Layne’s death. Jerry dedicated “Down in a Hole” and “Brother” to Layne, the latter of which featured a guest appearance by Ann and Nancy Wilson. He closed his set with “Them Bones.”15

*   *   *